For Pilot, a Detour on the Way Back

Andy Aduddell, an Air Force fighter pilot, shot a 77 in the first round. It is his fifth U.S. Amateur, but his first since 1996.CreditCreditJohn Mummert/United States Golf Association

By Peter May

Aug. 12, 2013

BROOKLINE, Mass. — Andy Aduddell was playing the best golf of his life 12 years ago when he showed up for a practice round before a tournament at his home course in Texas — and never hit a ball.

Like millions around the world, he was transfixed by television that day: Sept. 11, 2001. Golf had been his life to that point. He had had a successful college career at Texas Christian and Texas, where he once led a tournament field that included Tiger Woods. He was subsisting on mini-tours and state opens and was hoping to earn his PGA Tour card that fall.

But the memories of Sept. 11 resonated. Three weeks later, he was leading a tournament in Lake Charles, La., after two rounds. The third round was delayed by rain. While he waited in his hotel room for the weather to break, Aduddell picked up the phone. He called an Air Force recruiter.

“It was the first time I had ever done anything like that,” Aduddell said Monday after the first round of the United States Amateur Championship. “A lot of people were deeply affected by that day. I wasn’t that different from anyone else.”

The call to the Air Force recruiter led to his second act, as an F-16 fighter pilot and a major in the Air Force. Over the next decade, the training, the travel and his life in the military put a damper on his golf game. Aduddell played no competitive golf, teeing it up only for the occasional weekend round.

But in 2012, while he was still in the Air Force, he began to play more regularly. His game returned in a hurry. He won the All-Armed Forces Championship against other servicemen last October. He received a sponsor’s exemption into last year’s Arizona Amateur and won that as well. He also won the Arizona Mid-Amateur.

Aduddell then qualified for the United States Amateur for the fifth time — and first since 1996 — by winning medalist honors in a sectional qualifier in Litchfield Park, Ariz. Unfamiliar with the Country Club in Brookline, where the tournament began Monday, he and his wife, Rebecca, rented the movie “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” which chronicles the improbable 1913 United States Open triumph of an amateur, Francis Ouimet, at the course.

Aduddell, 38, opened the Amateur with a seven-over 77 on Monday, betrayed by a wayward putter on the venerable club’s slick greens. He missed makable birdie putts on the 15th, 16th and 17th holes and closed by three-putting the 18th.

“I think maybe I should try a cue stick,” Aduddell said. “It’s really disappointing. That is usually one of the strengths of my game. But I had 37 putts. I don’t know if I’ve done that before.”

He said that he still feels he can make it to match play; the low 64 scores out of 312 from two days of stroke play qualify. But even if he does not, he said he could appreciate the journey that took him and Rebecca, a law student at Arizona State, to greater Boston for the week.

“Getting here was the experience,” he said. “Everything else is just gravy.”

Aduddell (pronounced A-dud-dle) is one of the elder statesmen in a tournament where the average competitor is 22. He was that kind of hot shot from 1993 to 1996, playing in four consecutive Amateurs. Back then, golf was his passion. Now his perspective has changed.

“It’s 180 degrees different,” he said. “I’m enjoying this event a lot more. Golf was much more serious for me back then, and I see a lot of my old self in these kids out there.”

These days, he said, if he chooses to play a weekend round at his home club near Phoenix, his 2-year-old son, Brooks, demands to tag along. Brooks is spending this week in Corpus Christi, Tex., with his grandfather. On Monday, Rebecca Aduddell spent the round texting scores to her father-in-law.

Aduddell met his wife while stationed at Shaw Air Force Base in Columbia, S.C. Rebecca was earning her master’s degree in German from the University of South Carolina. They spent two years in South Korea before moving to Luke Air Force Base outside Phoenix.

It is there that Aduddell learned to fly F-16s. Now his time is primarily spent instructing future F-16 pilots. His military commitment ends in nine months, and he said he had no idea what would come next.

“We’re weighing our options,” he said. “But I want to keep flying.”

More than 1,400 of Aduddell’s 2,000 hours of flight time have been in F-16s. He has yet to fly a combat mission, however. He was scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan, but the assignment never materialized.

About the same time, he received a phone call asking him if he wanted to play in a tournament in Peru. He finished fourth. Golf had re-entered Aduddell’s life, not as the all-consuming game it once was, but as a pleasant and occasionally rewarding diversion from his day job.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: For Pilot, a Detour On the Way Back. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe